Monthly Archives: June 2011

If you haven’t been living under a rock, then you’ve heard of the bestseller Go the Fuck to Sleep by Adam Mansbach. If you have been living under a rock, you can listen to Samuel L. Jackson make love to the words until it’s taken down for copyright violation:

Story of my damn life.

Everyone knows that you don’t sleep with a newborn in the house. Honestly, they should have a warning that pops up after that second pink line on the pee stick comes up.

(Why is it pink?!)

WARNING: YOU WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN. YEAH, THE INFANT PHASE SUCKS AND YOU WILL PROBABLY BE A WALKING ZOMBIE FOR THE FIRST 3 TO 6 MONTHS. BUT THE TRUTH IS, THE NEXT TIME YOU WILL HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT YOUR BODY WILL BE TOO OLD TO ENJOY IT BECAUSE YOU WILL BE WAKING UP EVERY 2 HOURS WITH ACHY JOINTS, A FULL BLADDER, AND SCIATICA FROM HELL.

If you’re like the other uptight pricks out there, you’re thinking gee, if you hate your kids so much, why did you have them? Who said anything about hating my kids? I freaking love my kids! I just want them to sleep, for the love of brown rice, sleep! Here’s the thing. If I don’t get enough sleep, I Lose My Shit. My kids? They don’t like to sleep. The Future Cult Leader was a great sleeper as an infant, but as she’s grown into her disorder she’s come up with insomnia. The other night? Fourteen visits upstairs. And before you go saying I must be letting my child walk all over me, let me say this: military style torture would not have broken this kid. Evil Genius didn’t sleep for her first 6 months (thanks, reflux!), and even after that we were lucky to catch a 4 hour stretch. Even now, after almost 2 years of life, there are nights she wakes up 10 times. And early. Oh god. Those two are a terror tag team of pre-dawn waking. Both of them need 11-12 hours, and when they don’t get that, they tend to Lose Their Shit. If I haven’t slept and they haven’t slept, then all three of us are Losing Our Shit.

The last few days, Monsieur Stoic’s family has been Without Their Shit. Cult Leader defiantly refuses to sleep, Evil Genius has a hacking cough that wakes her up every 2 hours, and I’m in the middle of a psychiatric med switch so YAY! my sleep aid is no match for the adjustment period. Lucky for us, Monsieur Stoic can clean the house, do his work, play with the kids, run the errands, cook a meal, seduce me, and mow the yard on 5 hours of sleep, all without smudging his lipstick. It sucks, though, because then his family is hanging out and they’re all shitless.

Honestly, the man deserves an award for not Losing His Own Shit.

I like coffee. I drink it a lot. I drink about a pot a day, which some people, like my therapist, say is too much. But you know what? It’s entirely possible that coffee is what’s holding my marriage together during these shitless days. You can take my coffee…but you’ll have to pry it out of my cold, dead, shitless hands.